CivicActions

On June 15th, the Great Turtle Race 2008 reached its conclusion, after 14 days of people from across the world cheering on their favorite turtles. Organized by TOPP, NOAA, and Drexel University, the Race is a Flash application that processes data from tagged leatherbacks into an animated "turtle race".

350.org just relaunched their website and a killer video that explains the 350 idea without a word. Good for multilingual explications. Don't misunderestimate the power of 350...

One of the things I love about working at CivicActions is getting to hear about great projects happening in the world. It makes my days seem a little more hopeful and inspired to know that there are really smart people doing really great things.

Bill McKibben's Project 350 introduces us to the most important number in the world today.

350 is the red line for human beings, as science now tells us that unless we can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million (ppm), we will cause huge and irreversible damage to the earth. We are currently at 385 ppm and still rising.

To help spread the meme, Ian and I both spent some time making videos this weekend.

Earlier this week I met Brent Schulkin at EcoTuesday who shared about his Carrotmob vision: organizing consumers (via Flash Mobs) to make massive group purchases at companies who make environmentally friendly choices.

After a bidding war between local businesses, K & D offered to use 22% of the day's gross profits to upgrade their store to be more environmentally-friendly and energy-efficient.

Below is a short video of today's action (sans after-party):

What's my connection to mountaintop removal? Quite intimate, as I learned from entering my zip code into ilovemountains.org. The site identified my local electricity company's participation in mountaintop removal in the Appalachian states—showing the specific mountains (I've?) destroyed, as well as testimonials and photos from coalfield residents. Is that the impact I want to make here on earth? Did I do that? ilovemountains' online campaign employs the following smart strategies:

• Brings grassroots organizations together to maximize impact (7 organizations from 5 Appalachian states collaborated on the campaign)
• Personally engages visitors to the site (by showing the far˜reaching impact of daily local actions)
• Provides content that supports the diversity of its users, contributes to coalition-building, and frames issues in new ways ("Go Tell it on the Mountain" is an interfaith page where users can contribute prayers; an online "National Memorial for the Mountains" uses Google Earth; users can absorb their preferred type of content—video, photo, written testimonials, interactive tools).
• Provides clear calls to action (support the Clean Water Protection Act by writing to congress)
• Increases visibility and media coverage with star power (Willie Nelson)
• Uses web tools to support and spread their message (YouTube, Google Earth, online pledges, "myconnection" tool)—note that this strategy supports the other strategies, it doesn't serve as an end in itself!

Help end mountaintop removal: support this important campaign!

Sign the petition demanding that political reporters ask the presidential candidates about climate change.

In my ongoing campaign to think and be carbon neutral, and spread the message far and wide, I asked the DrupalCon Boston organizers to post information about offsetting the carbon footprint associated with traveling to DrupalCon in March.

I hope that individuals and shops will consider purchasing offsets for their DrupalCon associated travel, as well as other travel.

As folks might know, I'm a bit of an eco-geek.  I've been talking about my carbon footprint for a few years now and can remember when it might cause someone's eyes to complete glaze over.  But then we learned about An Inconvenient Truth, a new island was discovered after part of Greenland's ice sheet melted, and Al Gore and the IPCC one the Nobel Prize.  We all know that th

ChangeTheMargins.com is a small campaign for small change that collectively could have a big impact.  The idea is to get people, manufacturers and even software companies to change the margins on the printed page.  Seems pretty simple right?!  We all forgo the generous standard 1.5 inch margin for a more economical .75 inch margin (i would say lets go to .6!).